Section:GDN 1N PaGe:50 Edition Date:190829 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 28/8/2019 20:40 cYanmaGentaYellowb
- The Guardian Thursday 29 Aug ust 2019
(^50) Sport
Football
Bury MP and fans call
for inquiry into collapse
The Bury North MP, James Frith,
has called for an Insolvency Service
investigation into the company
voluntary arrangement (CVA)
organised to cut the debts of struggling
Bury , who were expelled by the English
Football League on Tuesday night.
The Football Supporters’
Association also said that it had
asked the insolvency practitioners’
professional body R3, and the
Insolvency Practitioners Association,
to investigate the conduct of the CVA.
The concerns of both Frith and the
FSA centre on a £7m claim admitted
into the CVA as a debt owed by Bury
to a company, Mederco, owned by
Stewart Day, the club’s former owner.
In December, shortly before several of
his property companies collapsed into
administration, Day sold Bury for £1 to
Steve Dale , the owner under whose
tenure the 134-year-old club has been
expelled.
In July Dale, having failed to pay the
club’s players for three months when
they won promotion and with the
club facing a winding up petition from
HMRC for £1m unpaid taxes, worked
to secure the CVA, which offered
creditors 25p for every pound owed.
At a rescheduled creditors’
meeting on 18 June, the insolvency
practitioner supervising the CVA,
Steven Wiseglass, included a £7.1m
debt owed to Mederco, which is in
administration. Creditors were told
that the debt had been bought by RCR
Holdings Ltd , a company formed only
James Frith
Bury North MP
‘I believe there
needs to be a
national regulator
for football’
much money, if any, was owed by Bury,
and in an offi cial progress report, did
not state a fi gure of £7.1m. They said
that there was a “lack of evidence as to
the accuracy and proof of the quantum
of any debt”, and had sold the potential
claim to any debt for £70,000.
Dale told the Guardian last week
that RCR Holdings, having had a
£7.1m claim admitted to the Bury
CVA, would still be seeking a quarter
of that full sum alongside other
creditors – £1.75m, despite having
paid only £70,000. Frith wrote to the
EFL executive chair, Debbie Jevans,
last week saying the RCR Holdings
deal “required investigation”, and he
told the Guardian that the Insolvency
Service should investigate the CVA as
“standard practice”.
Frith also called for a full inquiry
into the failures of football governance
that led to the EFL expelling Bury, after
Dale failed in the nine months since
his £1 takeover to satisfy the league he
had the money to sustain the club. “I
expect a full investigation into the role
football’s rules and regulation have
played in the club’s expulsion, and will
call for it in parliament,” Frith said. “I
believe there needs to be a national
regulator for football.”
A spokesman for the FSA, which has
campaigned continually for stronger
regulation of clubs’ ownership and
fi nances, explained of its complaint
to R3 and the IPA: “ Given the calamity
dealt to Bury and its supporters, we
are duty bound to ensure that there is
a full investigation.”
Wiseglass told the Guardian
that there was evidence at Bury for
admitting the debt owed to Mederco,
and said no creditor had appealed
against the CVA. He was, he said,
“very disappointed” the club had been
expelled despite agreeing the CVA.
“Everything relating to the CVA has
been done properly, but of course I am
regulated and if there is any inquiry I
will deal with and cooperate with it,”
he said. Dale has said : “All dealings
with the CVA have been done in a
correct and proper manner.”
Efforts were still being made
yesterday to ask the EFL to reverse
its decision and to consider a last-
minute off er to buy the club made by
a London-based Brazilian, Gustavo
Ferreira. He told the Guardian he is
a pastor, and made the off er shortly
before the 5pm deadline on Tuesday,
in partnership with a gold mining
company in Brazil, WGS Mining, of
which he is a partner. Jevans said,
however, that although the board
would look at any letter, there is no
appeal process and she suggested that
the expulsion decision is very unlikely
to be reversed.
James Frith and FSA raise
questions about handling of
CVA and football club’s debts
two days before the meeting. The
weight of the £7.1m debt was crucial
to the CVA being passed, as HMRC
and several other creditors voted
against it. Last week the sole owner
and director of RCR Holdings, Kris
Richards, 41, confi rmed to BBC Radio
Manchester that he is the partner of
Dale’s daughter.
The Mederco administrator ,
Leonard Curtis, told its creditors last
week that they could not establish how
▼ Bury fans gather outside
Gigg Lane after their club’s
expulsion from the EFL
CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY
David Conn
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